


pray the wires aren't coming

by activatingAggro (pigeonfancier)



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Body Horror, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-14
Updated: 2018-11-14
Packaged: 2019-08-23 19:39:22
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,905
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16625204
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pigeonfancier/pseuds/activatingAggro
Summary: Afzudi is the ceruleanblood who manages CC-R. He’s shorter than you, like pretty much everyone on here, and bone-thin, also like everyone here. It’s weird. There’s a lot of things weird about this place, like the fucking language, but the starvation factor?You’ve got the blubber stores to rival a goddamn seal, and half of your Rickshaw’s passed seal and gone straight into walrus. That’s part of the way II-J works! It’s part of why you work so hard to make sure it keeps working. No one’s ever so much as missed as a meal since you became Calico, one way or another, and no one’s ever looked like Afzudi in front of you, so skinny that you can count each knob in his spine. It’s weird! You hate it! But you hate a lot of things about other Rickshaws, from the language to the architecture to the starvation and disease that permeate them.That’s fine. That’s why you’re out here helping. Some folks compare trolls to crabs. They say if one pops up, the rest’ll drag it back down into the basket, just to make sure none of 'em get free. You’ve never believed that! You’ve improved your Rickshaw.You’re going to improve the rest, too, one city at a goddamn time.





	pray the wires aren't coming

If you’re perfectly honest, you put up a good face of things, but you don’t actually care that much about the other Rickshaws.

You love your community. There’s nothing that you wouldn’t do for II-J, and you know every face on it, even if you don’t know their names. They’re your people, and you’re their leader. It’s a role that you were hatched for, one that you were made for, and you could never be anything less than in love with the position, because it’s carved into your very skin.

But the other Rickshaws are not yours. This has always been your greatest flaw, and your guiltiest secret, but that’s just the fact of the matter. All you can do is try to work around it.. and when you get an opportunity, try to do your best despite it.

Case in point: you’re on CC-R tonight, here to figure out why their engines keep sputtering, and, in the name of honesty, you kind of want to burn the entire place to the ground.

Everyone here speaks - well, literally every fucking language, pretty much. There were teals chattering away in Eastern at the bistro. There’s been hands flashing in seadweller sign everywhere, constant little flits of movements to compound each spoken word. There’s people speaking the imperial mainlander’s tripe everywhere you turn, others slinging around some northern coastal variant, and constantly, constantly, there’s fucking Standard clattering against your ears like rocks, nasal and harsh over the din of the rest of the Rickshaw.

You had to take out your worm five minutes ago, just to keep from going insane. Noise’s never bothered you, but CC-R is one of the oldest Rickshaws, and it’s over three times the size of II-J. This city’s fallen into the waves more times than you can count, and it’s come back larger each time, with the remnants forming the bobbing islands you can see off in the distance. “Those work off of solar power,” Afzudi tells you.  
He’s one of the only trolls on here who actually speaks Seacant, and part of you is desperately, soppily grateful to him for it. “You don’t need to worry about those.”

“Right, ‘course.”

Afzudi is the ceruleanblood who manages CC-R. He’s shorter than you, like pretty much everyone on here, and bone-thin, also like everyone here. It’s weird. There’s a lot of things weird about this place, like the fucking language, but the starvation factor?

You’ve got the blubber stores to rival a goddamn seal, and half of your Rickshaw’s passed seal and gone straight into walrus. That’s part of the way II-J works! It’s part of why you work so hard to make sure it keeps working. No one’s ever so much as missed as a meal since you became Calico, one way or another, and no one’s ever looked like Afzudi in front of you, so skinny that you can count each knob in his spine. It’s weird. You hate it. But you hate a lot of things about other Rickshaws, from the language to the architecture to the starvation and disease that permeate them.

That’s fine. That’s why you’re out here helping. Some folks compare trolls to crabs. They say if one pops up, the rest’ll drag it back down into the basket, just to make sure none of 'em get free. You’ve never believed that! You’ve improved your Rickshaw.

You’re going to improve the rest, too, one city at a goddamn time.

“So! How many helms do you have working in the main generator?” It’s strange to walk through a Rickshaw where every building hasn’t been reinforced and rebuilt. You’ve had your residents working for sweeps to redevelop the city, in a mixture of solid carbon-fiber struts and flexible panels that’ll absorb the blows of the water, or the rain, or the rare bouts of gunfire. It’s never looked pretty, but it looks better than this. The buildings in CC-J are just.. shanties, aluminum siding and wood that’s been bleached bone-white over centuries of saltwater and air, and they sway in the wind above you as you walk. The only thing holding them up is the webbing stretched thick between all of them, shining like sails in the moonlight, and spotted with white bodies.

“Four? Five?” you hazard.

“Eight,” he says, leading you past the buildings, and straight down an alley where there’s pupas playing ulama. CC-R’s got more sparkplugs than you’ve ever expected. They scatter into the air like kinglets when you approach, the rubber ball clattering to the ground in the aftermath.

You snatch it up and spin it on a finger as you walk. “Eight? Seriously? Like, not harshin’ on you, dude, but - why? I know it’s big, but –”

He shrugs. “Our infrastructure’s just old, and it’s easier this way.” He looks back at you. The light here’s weak. Shadow curves across the sharp planes of his face, deepens the hollows of his cheeks. But when he smiles, it softens him. “I was hoping you could help,” he says.

Your stomach does a strange flop. “Right,” you say, and you don’t let your gaze linger on the way his mouth quirks, or the sudden surge of warmth in your voice. “That’s what I’m here for!”

CC-R’s engine room is buried deep within the rickshaw. He leads you from a shady plaza into a side room, and then down a winding set of stairs, where the chatter of the populace is finally fading, and the drone of engines is gradually replacing it. The original architects of the Rickshaws tried to make every surface sloped to force the seawater to run off, rather than collect. But the concrete here’s straight. The engine’s have to stay steady.

And biowire’s a delicate construct. “Careful,” Afzudi warns you as you walk. He’s flipped on a light attached to his forehead, and the bug’s glow casts an uneven glow: in the darkness, you can faintly see the outline of biowire pulsing on the ground, shadowy impressions that stretch as far as the eye can see. “We had to move all of them further downstairs, after the fifth century raid. It’s not ideal, but it keeps people from getting at the engine. Hey, babe -”

A spider is slinking out of the darkness, its eyes focused on you as it steps over him. It’s only the size of a dog, high enough to hit his ribcage, but there’s venom spooling on the end of its mandibles, and you hesitate until Afzudi waves you forward. “She doesn’t bite,” he tells you. “You’re with me, don’t worry. Mum just keeps some of the extra bodies down here to guard them.”

“Haha, no problem, dude. She’s great! I love her, like..” Afzudi raises his eyebrows at you, like he’s encouraging you to continue. So you gesture towards her, rolling your shoulders. “The whole smooth, shiny, bloodless carapace look? Really hot,” you declare, then pause, because he’s looking at you. The spider is looking at you. You’re pretty sure, if you paid attention, even the biowire would be looking at you.

“Uh, not in a weird way, though. Like, I am absolutely not a spider-fucker, although I know that sentence kind of implied it, but no?” It’s fine! You can save it, because Afzudi’s smile has turned into a proper grin, like he’s two moments from laughing. So you grin back at him, careful to show off your teeth, and step in close. “I absolutely person I am a person fucker,” you say, earnest, holding out a hand, palm up. Then you curl the rest of your fingers in, until only your smallest one is out. “Pinkie promise, dude.”

“You’ve talked about fucking my mum too much for me to shake hands,” he says. “Sorry about that.”

But he’s still grinning as he starts walking, and when you laugh, he joins right in.

The underbelly of CC-R’s much like the rest of it: wet, damp, and, as it turns out, totally moldy. There’s webs everywhere as you walk, coating the biowire and the ceiling. (“It’s to waterproof it,” Afzudi says, and you’re so glad you don’t mind bugs.) But at least the mold’s glowing, adding an uneven sort of light to things, just enough to make the shadows longer and deeper, and catch on all sixteen of eyes of the spiders that keep passing you by.

And eventually, shortly after the pressure shifts and your ears pop, you get to the core.

The helms, as it turns out, aren’t any healthier than anyone else on this Rickshaw. It’s the opposite! It’s.. honestly one of the most appalling things you’ve ever seen. Back on II-J, you keep your engines healthy, with columns that you replace annually, trolls trained up each cohort cycle specifically to work on them, and wire that’s custom bred to work with their systems. The whole system is hale enough that you don’t even have to run diagnostics: the engines’ll run their own diagnostics and e-mail them to you each week, keeping an eye on each one’s levels and needs, because it knows that each one will get a response.

The helms here don’t look like they could send messages, even if they wanted to. Each engine barely looks like it’s even alive. They’re hanging from the wires like skeletons, their arms bone-thin, the bodies bloodless and stark under the gray-white skin. There’s ash forming on them, like no one bothers to take care of them. There’s mats in the hair, like no one’s ever even thought to _shave_  it.

“Holy shit,” you breathe, and Afzudi starts to laugh, say something - then he catches sight of your face.

“Ah -”

You don’t wait to hear what he’s trying to say. You’re striding forward, taking the first helm firmly by the chin and pulling its head down. It’s so limp that there’s no reaction when you pull an eyelid back. There’s streaks all the way through it, black creeping like rot through the yellow of its sclera. When you release the lid, it takes a full five seconds for the skin to fall back down, and when you pinch the skin of its cheek, it doesn’t even react.

It’s so blanched, you’re not even sure what blood colour it is. There’s only the fuchsia of where the biowires cut into the skin, and the liquid flooding the veins pink.

The next one isn’t any better.

You’re not sure, at first, what you’re feeling. There’s just a certain cold numbness as you step from one column to the next, moving carefully to avoid the wires strewn across the floor. Because that’s the only word for them. There’s shards of scaffolding on the ceiling, jagged strips of metal where it once must’ve been, but it’s long since folded under the weight of the wires. And the wires are everywhere. They’re tangled in masses connecting the columns. They’re stretching heavy across the walls, thick enough to pass as wallpaper, and oozing a viscuous pink slime that sticks to your boots as you walk.

It’s hard to see where the floor end and the wires begin. Tripping down here’s inevitable, really, and that’s why, on your way to the seventh helm, your boot finally catches under one, and you fall directly into it.

The worst part of it all is that the helm doesn’t react. It’s a twiggy little thing, and you fall full-force into it, your hand scrambling at the jumpsuit just to keep yourself up. Your claws hook in, tearing into the fabric, and it’s only last minute horror that makes you jerk your chin up, angling your horns back and away from them. It just means your face hits it instead, landing right in its ribcage.

It should’ve made it howl. When you scramble to your feet and back, there’s heat blossoming across your face, and there’s brown blossoming on their newly exposed skin. But all they manage is a languid blink, like someone stirring from sleep.

And the chill forming in your chest finally solidifies when they fall still.

“Are you okay?” Afzudi calls. He’s still lingering by the door, watching you. From this distance, his face’s a blur of darkness.

“Yeah.” You’re walking over, more careful this time, but Afzudi doesn’t know you well enough to recognise the flat edge to your voice. He’s only met you a handful of times. The other Rickshaws change leaders too often for them to really know each other: you’re one of the only ones that’s actually stayed the same, the past four sweeps. “I’m fine. You’re going to need serious work down here. The biowire needs seriously cut back - that’ll take about eight perigees to avoid shock, and then you’ll need to start training it to stay in the scaffolds again. New scaffolds, obviously. Like, your helms need a full treatment, for the veins and the overall.”

“The columns need rebuilt. I can do all of this, obviously, but - what brand is all of this, redHotx20? I’m not even going to bother running a diagnoistic, you’ve got voidrot trying to spread all the way through the lines. You plug in any bugs to this, or a technomancer, and all you’re going to do is infect your tech. And -”

Afzudi reaches out, takes you by your shoulder. He’s got long, calloused fingers, with gently tapered edges. They match the rest of him, rail thin and delicate in the same way. “You’re sure about all of that?”

“Absolutely,” you tell him. It’s a shame. You’d liked him. “I’m thinking three hundred thousand, max, but at least one hundred and fifty, for all the work I’m going to have to do. And that’s just supplies. I’ll thread in some of our cultivar, but the medical work your engines are going to need alone is insane. And it’s all going to have to be manual.”

“.. we don’t have the money for that.” He blinks at you, owlish. You’d thought he was handsome a few minutes ago, with his cheekbones and his frailty, but there’s something repugnant about that weakness now. “We’ll just get new helms,” he says. “We have plenty of psionics on the rickshaw. It’s their duty.”

“Uh, no. You’re not going to go and kill your people to play engine parts, when we’ve got the mainland right there, and reputable engine sellers, like, literally everywhere. Like, how do you not have the money, dude? CC-R’s the biggest Rickshaw in the ocean. You have markets every perigee. Are you saying you can’t pull together a few hundred thousand to keep your city from sinking?”

He can’t even stop his people from starving. Of course he can’t.

“II-J doesn’t sell. You don’t understand how it works,” he says smoothly, like you’re a pupa, and when your eyebrows shoot up, he shrugs. “It’s not an insult. It’s just a fact.”

“I don’t need to sell to manage a fucking budget. Show me your books, and I’ll figure out how you can get the money together.” He’s already shaking his head before you finish. “Let me help you,” you say, frustrated. “That’s what you brought me here for. I don’t know what you’re doing wrong, but, like - your people are starving, dude. And your Rickshaw is dying, all the way down to your goddamn helms. Like, what the fuck?”

“I think,” he says, “you need to leave. I appreciate your help, but -”

It’s a shame, because you really, really liked him.

You don’t like bullying smaller trolls. But he makes it easy. When he pulls his hand back, you snatch him by the collar and you slam him into the wall, one swift move that pins him right against his mother’s webbing. She hisses next to you, surging forward, but you tut at her, pressing your hand harder against his collar.

He squeaks. She backs up, her two front legs rising in obvious distress.

“I’m sorry,” you tell him, “that I’m having to shame you in front of your mom like this, dude. And I’m sorry that you thought this was a conversation. But it’s not. Either you’re going to listen to me, or else your entire Rickshaw is going to sink. Or else I’m going to spare your people, and sink it for you. Because this -”

You jerk a hand towards the helms. Everything on this Rickshaw is dying, from the buildings to the residents to the engines themselves, and -

You absolutely want to burn this entire place to the ground. But it turns out you do care about the other Rickshaws, more than you’d ever thought you could.

“- this is not acceptable. And you should know that. You’re supposed to be the leader of this place. You chose to take on these responsibilities. You made this fucking choice!” You take a step forward. Your voice’s dropping. It’s not that you’re unaware of his lusus right next to you, or the building tension in her body. But you know how lusii work. How many times have you used their desire to protect their charges against them?

And right now, you’ve got him pinned like a fly against her own webbing.

Afzudi looks at you. “You’re supposed to protect them,” you tell him, gazing into his eyes. “So, like, let me help you, and do your fucking job, man.”

Then he holds up a hand. His lusus quiets, flattening herself to the ground in a clatter of keratin. “Fine,” he says. “What do we have to do?”


End file.
